Identifying the chaîne opératoire of club-rush (Bolboschoenus glaucus (Lam.) S.G.Sm) tuber exploitation during the Early Natufian in the Black Desert (northeastern Jordan)

Arranz-Otaegui, Amaia; Pedersen, Patrick Nørskov; Schmidt, Ann Frijda; Jörgensen-Lindahl, Anne; Roe, Joe; Villemoes, Johan; Pantos, George Alexis; Killackey, Kathryn (2023). Identifying the chaîne opératoire of club-rush (Bolboschoenus glaucus (Lam.) S.G.Sm) tuber exploitation during the Early Natufian in the Black Desert (northeastern Jordan). Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 47, p. 103677. Elsevier 10.1016/j.jasrep.2022.103677

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Club-rush (Bolboschoenus spp. (Asch.) Palla) is one of the most common edible wild plant taxa found at Epipaleolithic and Neolithic sites in southwest Asia. At the Early Natufian site of Shubayqa 1 (Black Desert, Jordan) thousands of club-rush rhizome-tuber remains and hundreds of fragments of prepared meals were found. The evidence indicated that the underground storage organs of this plant were recurrently used as a source of food 14,600 years ago. To determine how Early Natufian communities gathered, processed and transformed club-rush tubers into food, we designed an interdisciplinary study that combined experimental archaeology, archaeobotany, and ground and chipped stone tool analyses. We conducted more than 50 specific experiments over three years, and based on the experimental materials produced we inferred that 1) the best season for club-rush rhizome-tuber collection in the region was spring-summer time; 2) that the primary method to harvest the plant would have been uprooting; and 3) that the most efficient approaches to obtain perfectly peeled and clean rhizome-tubers could have entailed drying, roasting and gentle grinding of the tubers. Overall, our work provides important information to reconstruct the chaîne opératoire for club-rush tuber exploitation in the past. The experimental data and modern reference datasets allow us to interpret the archaeological material found at Shubayqa 1, and start identifying some of the activities that Natufian communities in the Black Desert undertook in relation to the exploitation of this particular source of food.

Item Type:

Journal Article (Original Article)

Division/Institute:

06 Faculty of Humanities > Department of History and Archaeology > Institute of Archaeological Sciences
06 Faculty of Humanities > Department of History and Archaeology > Institute of Archaeological Sciences > Pre- and Early History

UniBE Contributor:

Roe, Joseph Alexander

Subjects:

500 Science > 580 Plants (Botany)
900 History > 930 History of ancient world (to ca. 499)
900 History > 950 History of Asia

ISSN:

2352-409X

Publisher:

Elsevier

Language:

English

Submitter:

Joe Roe

Date Deposited:

29 Mar 2023 15:07

Last Modified:

02 Apr 2023 02:15

Publisher DOI:

10.1016/j.jasrep.2022.103677

Related URLs:

BORIS DOI:

10.48350/180942

URI:

https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/180942

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